Bridging the gap between Public Participation and Politicians: how to create politician-friendly public input
Written by the 2015 IAP2 Australasia Research award winner Associate Professor Jennifer Lees-Marshment (Auckland University, New Zealand) www.lees-marshment.org j.lees-marshment@auckland.ac.nz
Dr Jennifer Lees-Marshment is an Associate Professor of Politics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and author of the book The Ministry of Public Input: Integrating Citizen Views into Political Leadership. Jennifer is author/editor of 14 books and a world expert in political marketing and management and e has connected with practice throughout her career. See www.lees-marshment.org for further details.
Public participation is prolific in western liberal democracies but often has a major flaw: forgetting to consider the politicians they want to use the input from the public. The data collected then has limited impact on decision making; disappointing those who participate in public input processes, and damaging government-citizen relations. In IAP2 Award-winning research The Ministry of Public Input, I interviewed 51 government ministers to understand how to bridge the gap between public participation and politicians. This found that politicians do want to listen to public input when it is gathered in a way that makes it usable within a government context. There are 5 key ways to create ‘politician-friendly public input.’
- Include politicians to champion the process
Politicians need to be involved in consultation from the start. More impactful stakeholder initiatives have occurred when they were closely connected to decision makers, as in the case of the TSA’s Ideas Factory, the New Zealand Tax Working Group and the Australian Tax Forum. The TSA Ideas Factory was fully supported by the head of the organisation. The New Zealand Tax Working group was commissioned by Government itself and the group’s had close contact with the Prime Minister who then accepted the proposal to raise GST. Treasury staff argued that one of the factors in the success of the Australian Tax Forum was the buy in from the Prime Minister and the Treasurer and other senior ministers.
- Take into account the realities of government
Discussion needs to be realistic about what is possible and be open about what is on/off the table politically. The costs, challenges, and implications of different scenarios need to be explained in participation processes. And as a practitioner explained, ‘there are some things that are not up for debate. Like for example exploitation of petrol and mineral resource…This government has said it is going to do it. So there is no point in asking the public whether they would like it or not.’ Integrating the realities of government will help ensure that participants produce workable solutions politicians can use.
- Bring together people with different perspectives to work on creating multiple options for politicians to consider
Politicians noted the value of getting people with different perspectives and positions in the same room to create a range of constructive options:
- ‘I use to always like to try and get people in a room who had differing views and try and get them to talk it through and to try and then adjudicate to the group.’
- ‘Through structured dialogue you could hear different points of view, tease out the common elements, the fundamental differences, and what was driving them.’
- ‘The most useful public input is participative. By that I mean people taking a role in the decision making which includes responsibility for defending or advocating the result.’
- ‘A kind of a common agenda of what the issues are, a common agenda of what the problems are, and then everybody goes to work and solves them, and continues to work together.’
- Devote resources to processing the input for politicians
One of the biggest gaps in existing literature – and often, practice – is what is done with the consultation results. A properly resourced team is needed to evaluate and analyse the data from consultation, to ensure that something is done with the input. Indeed, it is almost shocking that such little attention has been paid to what is done with the results of public participation. The data needs to be processed and connected to politicians.
- Provide a political/government response to public consultation.​
Public participation also needs to feedback responses from politicians, even where it includes saying no but with an explanation. Senior politicians explained they need to show ‘heard both sides of the story and I’ve changed my view on this, these aspects of it or I’ve changed my view radically or I haven’t changed my original view’ and ensure participants felt ‘they had their views heard, even if we don’t take up every little thing that they suggest.’ They then felt that the public would respect final decisions even if it wasn’t what they wanted.
Overall, there needs to be a bridge between public participation and politicians to make participation impactful. Just collecting public views is not enough. The collection and processing of public input needs to be done in a way that is politician-friendly.
For further details please see https://leesmarshment.wordpress.com/the-ministry-of-public-input/.
Bridging the gap between public participation and government
Proposed government unit to collect and process public input